©AES-F From the series - Action Half Life
While a lot of contemporary art remains in a narcissistic bubble dedicated to its own self-reflexive trajectory, there's art emerging from war zones and the Middle East that cuts through the abstractions to where it really bleeds.
Inspiration from real life in volatile regions of the ME can bring new meaning to what it feels to be a tortured artist. Iraqi artist Halim Al-Karim, defying Saddam's compulsory military conscription during the first Gulf War, hid in the desert for 3 years in a hole in the ground, surviving from food brought to him by Bedouins. His experience gives him empathic power to express the anxieties of his subjects. Many of his prints depict veiled or gagged men and women, their identities masked or blurred, radiating mute terror.
© Halim Al-Karim 'Urban Witness' Series
Churchtank Type 8 mixed media assemblage 2010 © Kris Kuksi
Even artists who are apolitical in their work cannot but be affected by the increased proliferation of war imagery in the media, and subconscious mirroring of violence in the cyber-world. But veterans exposed to battlefield-trauma, suffering from PTSD, might feel more drawn to the emotive power of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Titus Andronicus or ancient Greek theater than the slick, contemporary dramatizations of televised warfare. The group Theater of War, currently presents ancient Greek drama for military audiences, believing that the classical plays were originally written about combat veterans, and that their communal story-telling had therapeutic power.
The art collective AES+F began their Islamic project in 1996. Well before the September 11th strikes, they tapped into the western fear of Islam, exploring the idea of an Islamic jihad that would engulf western cities.
London - © AES/Islamic Project
Rome St Peters - © AES/Islamic Project
German-born English artist Karin Sabine Krommes' work explores the brutality of wartime aircraft design and the implied violence of machinery with cold, detailed precision. London-born Lebanese artist Zena el Khalil says of her own artwork, "I was born in war. Everything around me now is war. War has always been. I cannot remember a time when there was no war." Her mixed media artwork feminizes military men, sexualizes and homoeroticizes objects of warfare, AK-47s, and diffuses their brutality with fluffy pink barbie doll imagery. The two women's response to violence and war cannot be more differently expressed.
© Zena el Khalil It's a Boy! | 65x168 cm | mixed media | 2008
My First Diaper (My First Kiss) | 70x130 cm | mixed media | 2008 © Zena el Khalil
© Karin Sabine Krommes (1979) Swarm (Transit) Oil on linen 120 x 180 cm
Untitled III Hand cut card & insects mounted in a found entomology drawer © Karin Sabine Krommes
Text:Kisa Lala
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Thank you for the read. The fact that the spirit to create art even in such a war torn environment is an uplifting and underscoring piece of evidence for potential I feel for humanity.
Yeah, Churchtank!
Maybe different congregations could be in different church tanks fighting each other?
The British had a Churchill tank during WWII.
Overall feel is anti-Christian graphic propaganda with a Muslim originator.
This is understandable given the insane desires of right-wing Christians in the United States to declare a war of civilizations between Christendom and Islam. Support for Israel and the invasions of Muslim countries add to the hatred.
However, it is a pity that there is no work which shows that the other religions in this bloody mess also have their share of insane sects and groups. And that tolerance is limited in many ways. A church in Mecca would be nice, perhaps.
Perhaps a family of suicide bombers all wearing their bombs off on a picnic.
The craziness is everywhere. If you focus only on one side, you are not opposing it - you are part of it.
Harldy "old Cliche" at all. IT was the Christians that snuck bible verses onto the barrels of our guns in Iraq, all the while claiming this was not a holly war.
"Contrary to what [President George W.] Bush says and claims -- that we hate freedom --let him tell us then, "Why did we not attack Sweden?" It is known that those who hate freedom don't have souls with integrity, like the souls of those 19. May the mercy of God be upon them."
I've no sympathies for any form of terrorism, but I also don't see things in simplistic terms.
It is a beautiful and striking artwork, but I find myself puzzled by the message we are intended to draw from it.
http://alstefanelli.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/us-army-atheists-unfit-to-serve/